Niche
by Seta Suzume
Summary: How Finnick came to fit in with the victors in Four who preceded him.


Tyde was the one who met Finnick first. He was a scrawny eight-year-old, all big green eyes and missing teeth as he actually stood still long enough for Tyde to register him as more than a flash of suntanned skin. He was the sort of kid who always wanted to tag along and play with the older boys and girls. Finnick had two older brothers Tyde knew vaguely from the survival skills class he taught at the town school, but neither of them had possessed the inclination to go beyond that class and any regular school athletics to join the Special Athletics Club. There was a littler sibling too, come to think of it, but he wasn't even sure if the toddler Odair was a boy or a girl.

"I want to join up," Finnick said. He sounded more like he was making a proposal than asking for permission. A certain amount of confidence was necessary in a prospective volunteer.

Tyde sat on the step (ooh he could feel that in his knees) bringing him down to about Finnick's height. "Do you have permission from your parents?"

"Umm…no." He considered this for a moment and an optimistic way of qualifying it occurred to him. "…Not yet."

"Well, thing is, a kid your age can't join up without permission from your parents."

Finnick frowned. He would not have presented himself to Tyde this way if he hadn't been fairly convinced his father would say no in the first place. He had sort of hoped he could circumvent his parents on this matter, which was already something of a well-worn strategy of his when trying to get adults to give him what he wanted.

"Now," Tyde continued, "If by the time you're twelve you still want to do this and they're still not saying yes," he scratched his short, rough beard, "Then I imagine I can go give 'em a visit and tell 'em I'm looking to scout you because you're such a promising candidate and maybe that'll change their minds."

"You would?" Finnick's growing smile was somewhat tempered by the thought that four years sounded like an awfully long time, but here was a victor willing to stand and vouch for him and that had to be worth a lot.

"You betcha." Tyde winked. "Be seeing ya sooner than later maybe, huh?"

Tyde was an amazingly cool old guy saying that stuff, but he had only a passing acquaintance with Finnick's parents. Finnick was not surprised when Pa said no.

He spied on the club sometimes. Odysseus leading big kids through practice drills with wooden swords; Shad playing ball games with younger ones.

He wasn't a very good spy as far the going unnoticed part was concerned. Tyde saw him two or three times and just laughed. When Theo was out supervising swimming races and caught sight of Finnick at a distance he cheerfully waved for him to come down and join them, but Finnick, not keen on taking such a brief taste of involvement with the group he so fervently desired to belong to, shook his head and declined.

If Song or Shad or Odysseus noticed him, they just pretended they didn't. And, Mags, Finnick figured, didn't even have to see him to know he'd been coming around. She knew pretty much everything one way or another. When Finnick showed up to join the club the day after his eleventh birthday (with written permission from Pa), Mags was present. "You've been waiting for this a long time, haven't you?" she remarked as Shad scratched his way through entering him officially in the club logbook.

"Yes, ma'am! Very much!"

A certain degree of familiarity developed between Finnick and the four older victors through his mere presence in the club. It wasn't so big that everyone didn't know the name at least of everyone else and Finnick, with three siblings at home, was used to competing for attention- and frequently receiving.

Tyde knew who Finnick was because he thought he showed promise if he stuck it out; Odysseus knew who Finnick was because he thought he was a cut-up. The two of them ran most of the actual fighting-ish parts of the training. Mags came and went, silently appraising. Shad took care of the odds and ends and hovered around Tyde.

Theo and Song were rarely part of it at all- they had more outside duties to attend to- but Finnick quickly learned that Song knew exactly who he was as well on a day she swapped in for Odysseus. "Odair!" she snapped, just seconds into his picking up a practice staff and starting to clown around, "On task!" Some of his fellow young club members laughed at this instant scolding. "Oh," Song furrowed her brow and looked around the group, "Don't think that doesn't go for all of you as well as Odair. Don't think I haven't heard everyone's tricks."

"Coach O tells you everything, huh?" Lulu Ruiz hypothesized. It wasn't hard to tell that Song was his protégé. They shared some similar rough edges and weapons-handling mannerisms.

"Well, in your case, I also hear it from your mother at the post and paper-goods shop, Ruiz," Song gave a television-familiar smug smile and picked out a staff for herself. "Now are we going to run some drills or what?"

On some level, Finnick knew he shouldn't volunteer out of turn, but on the year of his third reaping, so sure that he knew what was needed to win the Games and that he had it, his reckless side won out.

Niemi Ray, his female counterpart, acknowledged this immediately on their brief trip to the Justice Building. "That was really stupid, Finnick," she said (she would revise her decision somewhat when she saw the Capitol reaction to him) and suffered some scolding from the escort for her unkind presumptions.

Shad exhibited all the energy Mags kept contained as he fidgeted excessively on the train ride in. If either of them shared Niemi's sentiment regarding his decision (to some degree they must have), they kept it to themselves. They played their roles, stern, but kind.

Mags' face was the last one from home he saw before entering the arena. "I'll see you again," she said as she hugged him.

Finnick wondered if she told all her tributes that.

And, almost as if he had gone to sleep and dreamed and then awoken back in his own bed, Mags was the first person from home he saw when he left the arena. "It's so good to see you again."

Shad was a close second, standing behind her. "You did good, Finnick," Shad began to sob, "You did really good!"

District Four victors and Finnick Odair were now overlapping categories.

Boredom was not one of the things Finnick had expected would follow his victory. It was just, sure his parents wanted him to keep on going to school, but it wasn't as if there were exactly anyone around making sure he went every day and it wasn't like it hadn't already been interrupted again by the Victory Tour. Many of Four's victors had won with only a perfunctory amount of schooling ahead of them anyway and had been granted an early graduation after merely tying up a few loose threads.

Procedure had varied for the younger ones. Jules had apparently completed what education he had remaining at home, too- Finnick didn't know- cracked up or something to handle being back in the classroom. Song and Theo had gone back to school intermittently and lazily from what he gathered (the literature teacher had intimated that he thought it was only a desire to return to the drama club, of which he was the faculty advisor, that had brought Theo back).

So if he were in the right mood, Finnick went to class and it he weren't, he didn't, which sometimes involved lying to his parents, but he was a pretty good liar and both of them still worked, meaning it was easy to avoid them during the day and not have them be any of the wiser as long as a teacher didn't decide to get in touch about it. The thing was, his siblings and all his friends were still in school. That was where the boredom came in.

Finnick was a social individual; he could only stand so many hours alone. …but looking out his window soon revealed he was not alone in his idle daytime hours in his new neighborhood. The other victors had things they did outside of their homes, but no one had a full-time job occupying his or her time. There was Shad right now, with a fishing spear and a creel basket and a net trailing out of it and maybe some other assorted gear.

Wherever he was headed (the what was relatively implied by his equipment), it had to be more interesting than simply staying inside. Finnick was off like a shot. "Shaaad!" he burst out the front door waving, "Where're you going?!"

The older man stopped, taken by surprise, but quickly categorized that surprise as pleasant and broke into a smile. "Hello, Finnick. Home today? I was going to sail out to the reef and, ah-" The "what" of his going was rather evident in the things he was carrying. He cocked his head to the side. "Would you like to come? I know you're really good at this."

A fishing spear and a one-person net. They were where the skills he had made such superb use of in the arena had started. "…Assuming you still like to do that kind of thing."

"Why wouldn't I?" Finnick asked.

"Oh," Shad shrugged, "You know." No need to encourage anxieties the boy might not possess. It might have taken Tyde years to stop being sickened by the smell and sounds of barbecuing and he himself still startled at sounds in the dark and if you let Odysseus see rotting things he turned the most peculiar sick shade of puce, but everyone was unique. Finnick had seemed relatively comfortable in the arena. Shad thought he would've made a poor mentor for him. The right victor had, again, gone to the right tribute. "Don't worry about it."

They set off to the small dock were most of the victors' boats were kept (Tyde's boat was too big, so he tied it up elsewhere)- Mags' prettily painted _Aoko Ayu_ where they had celebrated Finnick's homecoming late into the night, Odysseus' _Penelope_, a slim sailboat, Song's _Wavecutter_, a larger sailboat with colored sails, and Theo's _Alicia Louise_ (named for his mother, Finnick remembered, Four-made, of course, and among the most visible uses of his spoils of victory, though Mom and Pa always told him, "You were too little to remember that, Finnick," and brought up the story about the leftover pineapple cake his mother was allowed to bring home from Theo's Victory Tour party which was somehow the catalyst for his younger sister being conceived). Shad's boat was the least assuming of them all, merely a sort of rowboat, but she was all well maintained as any of the others.

"Ah, it's nice to have help with this," Shad let out a pleased sigh as they pushed off.

Finnick thought of Niemi. Her short, brown pigtails. Her many freckles, darker splotches against her already sun-dark skin. Her gray-green eyes, that he had not seen cloud over with death in person, but rather on the huge screen projecting the recap of his victory. Maybe they could have been the first pair to end it Four versus Four. He could have beat her then. Instead, he'd left her earlier.

If Niemi'd won instead, she would probably be here too, in this boat with Shad. Or maybe she'd have chosen or commissioned her own boat by now. It was the aspiration of most citizens in Four to own their own boat. Pa was making him take a while to think about what kind he might want- not that a victor couldn't afford more than one, but unless the other were something much smaller, that would be considered in bad taste.

"I'm sorry, Shad," he said.

"Hmm?"

"About Niemi."

"Hmm," the different colored irises of Shad's big, droopy-lidded eyes swam like fish in the water under a fast-rising film of tears, "It's fine, Finnick. You don't need to apologize about her to me. We victors understand." He sniffed and a bit of that water ran down his face, but he wiped it away with the back of his hand and he seemed calm enough not to cry any further.

"Oh, thanks…"

"You'll see how it is when you mentor. …Oh, I know you've spoken to the Rays, but there is someone I think it would be good to apologize to." He was momentarily distracted by a not-too-distant craft manned by some of the young men who had newly aged out of the Club. They waved and someone shouted something about "cleaning out Davy Jones' locker" and Shad waved back.

"Ah, now, what was I saying?" he returned his gaze to Finnick and his hand to the oar.

"Who I should apologize to."

"Lalo Brill."

Finnick was glad that for all his sentiment, Shad didn't seem to take offense to cussing because the first word that left his mouth would certainly not have flown with Mom or Pa or Mags. "…He was really going to do it?" he rubbed a hand against his forehead. "Gah, okay, I thought he was, but I guess I secretly hoped he was glad someone else went." Lalo was eighteen, tall and ropy. Like Odysseus, he had something of a sword specialty. He had got on pretty well with Niemi.

"Well, it's always possible that he's just talking big to us because it's embarrassing to say otherwise, but he always seemed up to it to me."

"…I'll do it," Finnick agreed. If he didn't, it was going to be awkward having this between them- between he and Lalo; between he and the other members of the Special Athletics Club. He was Four's only victor who had volunteered out of turn. It was a trend they would not want him to encourage.

"Thanks, Finnick."

The reef was quiet above water and lively below. Shad's graying hair flattered him even less wet than dry. They smiled at each other, heads bobbing above the spray.

Lalo was glad for the apology, though it seemed he had moved on from thoughts of his lost volunteering opportunity already. He'd gotten engaged. "I can't be mad at you now. I didn't realize Tetra liked me that much. Marrying much. She asked me as soon as you left on that train."

"Oh."

"She was really happy I didn't go." Lalo laughed, "She didn't think I would come back and, uh, I don't think what happened to you with the trident would've necessarily happened to me, so, thanks for coming to talk to me, but don't give it a second thought."

This, too, had turned out so much easier than Finnick thought.

Finnick was alone again on the local Sailors' Day holiday. There had been something of a conflict of interests for his family when it came to how to celebrate. There was the customary party at the wharf the Odairs had always attended- Finnick's grandfather had been among those responsible for establishing the group gathering that occurred in its current form (Mags recalled him as owning the flashiest boat in town, which he had finally been forced to sell when his sixth child was born), but the victors planned to have their own barbecue at Mags' house (if everyone got together, it was usually at Mags' house). It was obvious that Pa and his brothers wanted to go to their usual affair. Mom would probably prefer mingling on the wharf, but was willing to go wherever was necessary to keep the peace. Only his sister was all that interested in spending the day with the victors and their families, but once Finnick told Pa he wouldn't be offended if they didn't spend Sailors' Day together, her opinion didn't mean much.

So that left him home for the time being. It would be embarrassing to show up at Mags' house before anyone else but maybe Mrs. Surfjan (who might have just stayed over the night before anyway). He reorganized the knickknacks in his windowsill then went outside to sit on the porch.

Finnick watched as a second story window opened off the side of Song Wen-Goff's house and the woman who had won the place leaned out, looking at the neighboring house, which belonged to Theo Goff, her husband. Supposedly Song and Theo both lived in Theo's house, while Song's family occupied the house she owned (and all of this, of course, was according to District Four logic, rather than the Capitol's designs for the place- between close relatives in Four it could be frequently hard to determine precisely who lived where), but that didn't look to always be the case.

Song took a few practice swings, then threw what appeared to be a yellow wedge (a tall kind of shoe- this was something Finnick had learned in the Capitol) across the distance between the two houses where it smacked into the window placed in a roughly equivalent position on Theo's house before falling down into the jasmine.

Were they fighting or something? Because if she just wanted to talk, she could go over to his house or call him on the phone.

That was definitely one thing about living in Victors' Village. The neighbors were never boring.

Theo's window opened in response and the district's last victor prior to Finnick came and peeked out. He looked like he had just gotten out of bed, even though it was almost noon. Maybe he _had_ just gotten out of bed. Maybe Song's shoe was like his alarm clock. Of course, unless stylists were involved, Theo pretty much had this perpetual bedhead look, so with him it could be a tough call to make.

"Are you going to Mags' place?" Song yelled at her husband so loud that Finnick could hear every word from his porch. "Because if you're not going, I'm not going either."

"I- I'm going," Theo nodded vigorously even though it didn't precisely compliment his response. "What time is it?"

"Now, or when she expects us to show up?"

"…both," Theo grinned sheepishly.

"It's eleven-fifty and Mags said if we don't get there by twelve-thirty she'll let Tyde feed all the barbecue to his students."

"Oh. I'll be down in a minute then." Theo closed his window and after a moment Song closed hers.

When she came out her front door she spared a fleeting glance toward the jasmine vines curled around the base of Theo's home, but didn't try to find her fallen shoe. Then she noticed she was being watched. "Hi, Finnick," she waved.

He took this as his cue to get up and chat with her. He had been invited to the same party after all. The three of them could go together. Song seemed much nicer since his victory. Maybe he'd proved himself to her that way. Maybe she liked all teenagers better when she didn't have to be in charge of them.

"So, do you two actually like each other, or is it just a PR thing?" Finnick asked, possibly pressing his luck regarding being on her good side. …Maybe marriages between victors were usually like this. He didn't have enough knowledge for comparison (there were married victors in…One? …Two? There was at least one other pair somewhere). Tyde wasn't married to a victor and it had turned out that Mags hadn't even been officially married to the man he remembered her living with when he was a kid, so that was another step removed as well.

"Oh, we like each other," she answered awfully neutrally in his opinion. Wasn't it supposed to bother people if you questioned their love a bit more that that? If Finnick had put the same question to his parents, he would have gotten some annoyance in return if not a swat to the head from his father.

"Just like," he confirmed.

"Well," Song narrowed her dark eyes into tiny slits as she considered the young victor and his inquiry, "You've seen me around all these years, Finnick. When you dislike as many people as I do, doesn't that sort of elevate the importance of 'liking?'"

"Do you really hate all those people? I mean, isn't it crummy to be angry all the time?" he pressed on. "I thought maybe you were acting- that it was your Games persona."

"…You didn't have to reach deep for your Games persona either, did you?" she guessed.

"N-no. Mags just told me to keep being myself."

"That's how it is for some of us. You be yourself and Mags does all the rest," Song shrugged, "So, yes, I really do hate all those people that you think I hate. ...Or at least most of them."

"What about the guy?"

A screen door slammed behind Theo as he staggered out onto the network of dirt paths that connected the various sections of Victors' Village. Finnick was willing to bet that he hadn't even been half-dressed while he'd been having that conversation with Song. Not that it mattered, since they were married. "Oh, hey, Finn," Theo acknowledged him, "Coming to the barbecue?"

"It's not like I have anything better to do. …Besides, Mags would probably be mad if I didn't." Well, not necessarily mad so much as "disappointed." But Mags' disappointment bothered him more than a lot of people's anger. She could probably win a nation-wide guilt trip competition. No wonder most of them did what she wanted.

Theo set an ambling pace and Finnick fell in alongside him. Song's cheap sandals slapped against the bottoms of her feet as she trailed behind them, using her husband's arrival as an excuse to ignore Finnick's last question for the moment.

"Mags is just crazy about you!" Theo exclaimed. He turned to look back over his shoulder. "Isn't she, Song?"

"Yeah, that's not an exaggeration for once," she agreed, "You definitely trumped all the rest of us when you won."

"Maybe even before he won," Theo countered, "I could tell she liked him a lot and that was just from the footage. Shad thought so too. That you were special, Finn."

"And this coming from Mags, who likes practically everyone…" Song noted, positing Mags in sharp contrast to their earlier assessment of her own personality.

"Yeah, maybe Finn's the son she always wanted!" Theo hopped around.

"Geez, you do have something in common," Finnick acknowledged, "You're both super annoying!" Up close, they weren't quite the cool older kids he had thought of them as- that was what they had been once, maybe. That was how the Games had immortalized them. They were much younger than the other four victors, but they were adults too.

"And proud of it, kid," Song smirked. With three older brothers, she was plenty used to teasing.

"Hey, hey," Finnick insisted. He could be just as annoying as these two excuses for adults. "You didn't answer my question, Song. What about the guy?"

"What guy?" Theo asked in a way that implied he was thinking this was about him.

"The guy in your Games."

"Abel?" Theo asked. Theo hadn't known the male tribute who went into the arena alongside Song all that well at the time (like Song, he was just a bit too much older), but over the years one was bound to learn about the other's ghosts (Theo's -Inez- had two hinged dimensions in Song's mind, as a girl she'd known in training and as a memory that haunted Theo in jaunts to high places). Each of them had at least one such invisible shade.

"No," Song understood what Finnick wanted to hear about as much as she wished she could sidestep it. …But what she was forced to share with the Capitol again and again couldn't be that awful to tell to this boy who was her neighbor now and hopefully someday her friend (when he was bit more grown-up perhaps). "He's asking about Russet."

Theo didn't have anything he wanted to say about that. Between he and Song the matter had been more or less closed, and even if it came up on the past-Games-gossip-circuit he was content with that. People who were dead didn't matter. Things that the Capitol made you do didn't matter. Things were different for people in their position. Other victors should understand (that was part of what made Tyde and Rita so amazing in Theo's eyes- how did they close the gap of the Games that separated their lives? How did they- usually- manage to understand?). It was Song's to talk about or not, as she liked.

"It was exactly what I've always said it was, Finnick," she confirmed succinctly.

Song's previous version of the story replayed in his mind. For some reason that outlier boy liked her. She didn't know why. He had seemed "All right." "During training we had a conversation about weaving with plant fibers. We were kind of on the fence if we should ask him to be with the Career alliance or not, but the decision ended up not. The others made me tell him to prove that I was cool with it. He shouldn't have liked me after that."

She'd looked uncomfortable saying it, but not sad. It was just the reality of things. It seemed like everything about Song was real. Finnick wasn't sure if that was kind of cool or something sad or if it could be both. "I gotcha." He wouldn't bother her about it again.

As they drew near to Mags' house, Song picked up her pace and pulled ahead. Her niece and nephews were outside playing a game while Mrs. Barrow and the younger of Song's two sisters-in-law looked on.

"You love her, huh?" Finnick turned his scrutiny onto Theo.

"Couldn't stop if I tried," Theo shrugged. "…But you know the way Mags likes to matchmake. She'll help you reel yours in sooner or later." He laughed and Finnick wasn't sure it was all that funny. Actually, it seemed pretty weird.

"…I think that implies that she helped you win so Song could have _you_," the boy observed.

"That it does," Theo agreed, "But between us, Song is the one who needed someone more."

"Mags didn't find someone for Shad or Odysseus," Finnick fussed over the matter, though he meant it in good humor and could be fairly sure that Theo would recognize it as such.

"Not everyone needs the same kind of things in their life."

"Who said Mags didn't find me someone?" Odysseus came up behind them and waited, theatrically, until he knew they were both looking before he winked.

"Yeah, your imaginary girlfriend you named your boat after," Theo charged and Odysseus started in on him with some low-key grappling moves.

Mags and Mrs. Surfjan came around from the back of the house to take in the seen. "Is it possible to get more than three victors together anywhere and not have someone wind up on the floor one way or another?" Mrs. Surfjan wondered.

Finnick hopped back out of the way as Theo wound up, laughing, on the ground.

"I hear my son!" came Mr. Goff's voice from around back, "He finally woke up?!"

As Song's niece and nephews took this as their chance to pile on their uncle while he was down, giggling and poking and prodding him, Finnick couldn't help but wonder why his parents seemed so reluctant to engage with the victors' community. Sure, these people could be weird, but they were also nice. And they were the neighbors now. The people you were supposed to know and try to get along with, whoever they were.

"Finnick all alone?" Mrs. Surfjan wondered.

Mags put her arm around his shoulders, "Ha! Alone? Faline, he's with me."

Faline Surfjan put up her hands, "Oh, how did I ever make the mistake of thinking otherwise! No one has as many friends as you, Mags!"

Only Odysseus asked why his parents didn't come.

"Pa wanted to be at the wharf."

It occurred to Finnick that Odysseus had also come alone. Shad, the third solo attendee, didn't have any living family, but Odysseus, who in victory had become the district's most famous orphan, had a bunch of adopted brothers and sisters, some with families of their own, and his adopted mother, Leelee Armain, was living too (amusingly, in Finnick's eyes, she lived with one of the adopted daughters and not her only biological child).

"Yeah, Ma's there too."

"…So how long do we usually party around here?" Finnick attempted to lighten the mood between them.

"'Til Mags gets tired. ...Or tired of having us at her house. That's the usual excuse for it."

"And what do you do if it feels like the party's ended too early for you to go and be home alone?"

"Go into town." He looked around to make sure he wasn't within immediate earshot of whoever it was he didn't want to hear this. "Go to The Margarita and drink."

Finnick wondered if Odysseus was lonely, but unlike his casual impudence toward Song and Theo, he was sort of afraid to just out and ask Odysseus about it. "I heard you had a dog once…"

"Thirteen years. Name was Sam. I love dogs."

His family had never owned any, but some of his friends had. "I like 'em too."

At the end of the affair, there was something of an annual fireworks war between the victors out on the island and the heads of the fishermen's union. The victors and their families climbed the rickety wooden stairs down to their isolated beach to set their stash off from the sand. The best part of this, as far as Finnick was concerned, was that Mags and Mrs. Surfjan were all set to climb down slowly and carefully on their own and then Tyde and Odysseus dove in and picked them up, inspiring only mock-protests. Mags, in particular, cackled all the way down.

Someday, Finnick decided, when he was bigger, in a couple of years, he'd be the one to carry Mags. He liked to make her laugh.

As usual, the fishermen's union won the fireworks battle, however, from the other side of things Finnick had never been aware that the victors seemed to be stopping short and allowing them to win. "I would not take that from them," Mags said.

"But our side did win once," notes Javier Barrow, Tyde's only son and oldest child, though a married man and father himself whose children are already older than Finnick.

"Yes," Tyde agrees, "Because no one had explained to Jules that we were letting them!"

Shad laughed. "He acted so embarrassed in town the next day everyone knew he had something to do with it even though none of us planned on telling."

Their school of fish packed up and drifted apart a bit at a time, the Barrows one way, the Wens and Goffs another, Shad half-asleep and Odysseus wide awake and carrying a large package of leftovers.

Finnick could see down toward his house. The windows remained dark.

"Would you like to stay over?" Mags asked him.

"I'm staying too," Mrs. Surfjan beamed as though it would hardly be a strange thing.

Finnick hesitated. He looked again toward his new home, then back to the smiling old women. "Okay. …I'll stay. But I've gotta run home first and leave a note on the table so they'll know where I am when they get back."

"That's a good idea," Mags agreed.

"Such a nice boy," he heard Mrs. Surfjan say as he hurried away into the sparsely lit night.

He came to spend a lot of time at Mags' home. As far as Finnick could tell, she never turned down a guest, though it did appear that he was among those more heartily encouraged to stay often and stay long.

He wondered how long she had lived with "Mr. Mags" before he had passed away two years ago. There was a photograph in the kitchen of the two of them, both small and graying, standing on her porch with a rope-length of dried fish stretched between them. A niece of his had inherited the Ortiz Boat Shop.

Mags had her neighbors and her victors, but she might still be lonely. She didn't clutter the front rooms of her house where people usually visited, but the further in you were able to venture, the more photographs you saw. There were living people, certainly, though they might be hard to recognize in the pictures compared to how they looked now, but even they were nearly always bracketed by images of the dead.

There was Mags and her hair was brown and rolled up in a style she had favored then and with her was an equally young man with coloring much like hers. This was Pal Fields, she'd told him, worlds away from the frail old man in the Capitol who had fussed and tried to give him candy. Only that Eight-style embroidery seemed the same. But in the photo there was a girl between them in a sunflower-patterned sundress who was only a name now on the role call of victors in Eight.

There was Mags with her father. There was Tyde, recognizable a year or two pre-victory, with Mags and a gaggle of other teenagers, maybe a good half of whom would go on to be less successful tributes. Mags and Maria Atwater and her son Shad (who would always be impossible to fail to recognize at any age with those eyes). Mags laughing with a beatific Mrs. Surfjan at her wedding with her groom who had later scarcely outlasted their victor son.

Mags remembered the names of all of these people if he cared to ask even without consulting the albums where she kept even more of them with the names written down. It seemed kind of funny to try and dig up what seemed like the most obscure and forgotten Special Athletics Club picture and quiz her, but, for first names, at least, she couldn't be beat. Some inane show droned on about him on TV, but Mags didn't skip a beat in her counterpoint: "Johndory, Vetch, Akiko, José, Inanga, Lu- well, his full name was Luderick- Catla, Buri…oh, Atleen Rivulen, she was so good. She and Lu were the ones who were electrocuted…"

"That's why you know so much!" Finnick guessed, "Because you remember almost everything!"

"I doubt I know half as much as you think I do, Finnick, but, yes, remembering might account for a lot of it."

"You've known every single victor at least a little bit," he charged. There had only been eleven before her. She must have, since there was a picture in her bedroom of her with a man he vaguely knew was the first- he had seen it once when the wind was blowing in cold and she had sent him up to bring her down a wrap. She couldn't have been all that far post-victory in that picture. She and the other victor had both posed with almost comically huge grins.

She nodded and her response was eerily solemn. "We were, all of us, born before the Games for a while back then."

But that was all she said about "before the Games." That time was like God. It had been and it meant many things, but there wasn't much official leeway for discussing it.

As much as he liked Mags though, he didn't feel like he could talk to her about everything.

Sometimes it was better to be alone anyway. One day, after coming home from school, and a particularly bad fight with Pa, under stress of his own from work troubles, including pressure from some coworkers to cut back because he had a kid who could support him now, Finnick decided to take a page from Odysseus' playbook.

The Margarita was pretty much dead at this early hour, but Finnick walked up to the front and took a seat on a stool without taking stock of his fellow day-drinkers.

The bartender looked from the ridiculously famous fourteen-year-old at the counter mouth a bit agape. What was he supposed to do here? Finnick was underage. ...but not all the rules seemed to apply to victors. The last one had been treated like an adult after he won though he was only sixteen. But he hadn't come to the bar asking to be served.

The kid just kept on looking at him steadily with his green green eyes. Kid, the bartender thought, why can't you just give up and make this easy for me?

He looked around the bar for assistance in the matter. Thankfully he found it, "Hey, Armain." As best at the bartender could tell, within the district, only victors could manage the affairs of victors (but even the best among them bowed to the Capitol- their children went away to die in the Games, they wed in front of cameras, they hawked Crispco Crackers and indoor wave pools and hybrid berries on television ads).

Odysseus rose from his game of solitaire and sat down at the bar to the left of The Margarita's would-be customer.

Finnick frowned as the bartender took this excuse to back away. This was just like being in school and being tattled on. Odysseus, as was his usual way, didn't say anything. He knew that their youngest victor would speak up eventually. And Finnick knew this too. It made him hold his tongue longer, but eventually his complaint had to come out.

"Tyde said that as soon as I became a victor, I was a man," he insisted.

"Provisionally, let's say," Odysseus altered the other victor's judgment. He set his elbow on the bar and leaned his head into his hand, observing Finnick through the lens of age and time and victory and hundreds of would-be tributes trained before him. "...Have you asked Mags about that?"

"...No," Finnick admitted. "But," he squirmed in his seat, "Tyde said so and I figured this was between men."

"Okay, I know it's different because he's not a victor, but what about your dad? You ask him about it?"

"No." Not him either.

"Well, if it's something you can't bring up with either Mags or your parents, deep down you probably know that it's not quite on the level."

Finnick considered this. "Does that mean Tyde is a liar?" He was curious. He rarely saw the older victors disagree. He'd never heard one of them level such a charge against another.

"There are lots of components to being a man. Being a victor jumps you ahead toward some of them, but it doesn't complete the process in one stroke." Odysseus raised his head back out of his hand. "Tyde, you know, kind of likes to simplify things."

"...because the world is too complicated," Finnick mused, "It's more complicated than you can possibly imagine."

"And certainly more complicated than you can hope to express in words," Odysseus nodded. Finnick was a smart kid. He got the idea.

"Not just the few words he wants to tell a nosy kid like me so I'll shut up and let him go to bed because I've shown up on his doorstep just as he's turning the lights out," the boy grinned.

"Yeah, as much as we want to do right by you, and all the other ones too, Finnick, Tyde and Shad and me, if you ask us stuff too late at night, we just want to wrap it up and go to sleep. It's because we're old."

"Mags is older than any of you."

"But don't go saying she's old to any of us big kids of hers or you're gonna end up getting tossed in the harbor for the sake of her honor."

"She knows though," Finnick insisted, "She doesn't mind."

"Being that she's the only completely grown up one of us, of course not," Odysseus laughed, "Like I said, it's us big kids you'd be offending."

"…Should've known I couldn't copy you and get away with it." Really, it did figure that the one time he came Odysseus would already be there. "You're not supposed to be with the club or something?"

"I imagine you have homework."

"I've got the whole weekend." Finnick narrowed his eyes, realizing that the homework remark had to be some kind of dodge. "…Are you ditching Special Athletics, Mr. Armain?"

"I swapped out." He sounded exasperated. "Song's got it covered. And, while a little respect _is_ appreciated, now that you're a victor, I will allow you to call me by my first name."

"Odysseus," Finnick said, just to try out the long string of syllables on his tongue for the first time in front of the man in question. "That's a really fancy name."

"Sounds a bit better in an official announcement than finicky Finnick. You know, Mags helped my Ma pick this name for me."

To say that maybe she'd been around the Capitol too long when she picked it would've been too cruel an insult (and maybe it wasn't quite Capitol anyway, but it gave him that kind of feelings- Capitol or Two-like). It was more like they were splashing water at one another than having any real kind of fight. "Do you think Mags would've named her own kid that?"

"Probably not. …But sometimes I think about, you know, she _could've_ adopted me. I could've been her kid. She was there on the boat Up-District when they found me. Of course, if I had been Odysseus Gaudet, could I have left that arena alive? Would an adopted kid suffer that same level of victor's kid prejudice?"

Finnick didn't even have a guess as to the answer of that question. Tyde's older daughter had been reaped and no girl from the Club had stepped up to take her place. She'd gone to the same fate as every other victor's child in the Games he had heard of.

Odysseus stood up. "Let's get out of this place. Go for a walk or something."

Finnick didn't move quite as fast as Odysseus wanted him to and the middle-aged victor turned around to hurry his pace with a look (it was the kind of thing Pa would do and Finnick hardly felt it did much to improve his and Odysseus' relationship). Odysseus led the way to the shore, gradually falling into a more meandering pace the more space was put between them and the various casual afternoon beach-goers.

"Hey, I realized something we have in common," Finnick told him, "Mags mentored both of us and Shad mentored our district partner."

"I don't think sharing Mags makes us all that special- she pretty much can't stand not to mentor. She shouldn't, but she feels guilty if she doesn't. …I didn't think about that part about Shad though." Odysseus approached the surf, considered its rise and fall for a while before stepping in to let it roll over his toes, sandals and all. "I didn't want to be in the Games though. I only trained because we had bad odds in my big family, all of us taking tesserae out to help support each other, 'cept Amy." He looked back over his shoulder at Finnick, who approached a little to hear him better over the sound of the encroaching ocean. "Amy's the baby," he explained, "The rest of us had her covered."

"It's like that with my sister too."

Odysseus looked back out to sea. "Don't get me wrong, I love my family, but even though my parents were family friends of Mags and her Pa and got a little extra handout because of that now and then they were a lot nicer than they were wise to adopt five kids on top of Danny."

Finnick pulled off his sandals and held them, going to stand beside Odysseus and allow the sand to sink in and out between his toes. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah, I grew up in the same house Mags did, actually. They gave it to my great-uncle when she and her dad moved to the Village."

"So you knew Mags when you a kid. You and Jules too." Not in the generic way Finnick had always sort of known her until he joined the Special Athletics Club, the way most kids did who lived in and around town. More like they could've been her extended family.

The waves kept up their pace.

"Hey…" Finnick said, "Is there anything I should know about Jules? So I don't accidentally say something really dumb to Mags or Mrs. Surfjan?"

"To them? I can't imagine you could say anything that'd really get to either of them. They're both good with kids like you. But there's also me you could upset."

Finnick was already trying to decide if he regretted bringing it up.

"So you want to know about Jules. Well, the thing about me and Jules is, the day before he died, I said something really horrible to him. Because I was clueless, I suppose. Because I thought I knew what it was like for him, I guess. I thought I did. We were both victors. We were best pals before that even. But I was wrong. Anyway, I couldn't bear to tell anyone about it for a long time. I just went around secretly feeling like I was the one who'd killed him."

A variety of questions flitted through Finnick's mind, like how still no one had straight up told him what had happened to Jules Surfjan anyway, but only one of them seemed suitable to actually ask. "How'd you get over it then?"

"I told people." Odysseus paused and scratched his head. He'd been in a shaved head phase for a while, but had decided to let his hair grow back in (possibly to convince people that the shaved look had not been to hide any heavy balding if the fish market rumors were to be believed). "Secrets can be really powerful."

He sighed. "But when I shared what I knew with Mags and Mrs. Surfjan and all, I could suddenly see a much bigger picture. When I said that stuff to Jules, I might have been insensitive and a crummy friend, but I hadn't caused his death. I thought I'd been the one fixated on death since the arena, what with the things I started seeing, but it was Jules, really, who couldn't escape it."

"…I'm not thinking about death much, Odysseus," Finnick muttered. It was nice for Odysseus to be treating him seriously like this, but he seemed to be aiming to make more than one point with his story and only the one about sharing one's secrets was getting through to him.

"Yeah, you better not be. I'd tan that right out of your scrawny hide." Out of the corner of his eye, Finnick caught of flash of bright white teeth against Odysseus' dark skin. That jokey tone had entered his voice again.

"Tyde told me you used to get in trouble for fighting."

"Aah, but I'll save that for the problems it can solve now." He stood on one foot and removed one sandal and then switched to the other side to take off the other. "I'm going swimming. You go home and make up with whoever you were fighting with before I ran into you."

Finnick frowned.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to get you in trouble with anyone. You went into a bar. So what? I didn't catch you drinking."

"I'm, uh. I'm sorry, Odysseus."

"For what? Aaah," he waved a hand over his head in some kind of expression of his frustration, "You don't need to apologize to me. Say whatever you wanna say about Jules. Be happy you were happy to head to the arena. I'm the one here who's hard to get along with. You're an okay kid, Finnick. You try and hang onto that."

Finnick didn't feel quite right about leaving Odysseus there so alone. He retreated behind some rocks and watched for a while as the older victor waded out and swam. When it seemed like he could be more or less sure there was nothing out of the ordinary about this, he headed back to Victors' Village.

Theo was on his way out with a suitcase in his hand. "Hey, Finnick! I'm off to do a guest spot on "Top Tier" tomorrow. Is there anything you want me to bring back from the Capitol?"

He couldn't think of anything. There was just… Too much. There was a lot of good stuff, but he was hardly used to any of it. "Nah. Thanks for asking though. But, uh, you're gonna go see Song on the way out, right?"

"Of course."

"Can you tell her that Odysseus is off swimming north of town?"

"Yeah, I will. But don't worry about him too much, okay? He's been moody like that as long as I've known him at least."

"Have, uh, fun on the show." Finnick had never watched "Top Tier." It was a soap opera mainly about designers at some prestigious design house (his mother had gotten into it for a while when she'd been sick and forced to stay at home, but once she'd been able to go back to work as she desired "Top Tier" had been set aside without a second thought). If Theo were to be used well by the program, he would probably be playing a thinly veiled version of himself. There was a reason he was invited onto so many reality and variety programs- "Theo Goff" was definitely his best character.

"I think I probably will! See you around!" he bounded off at his chipper best.

Mr. Goff was standing just outside Theo's house, probably merely lingering after seeing his son off. "Oh, Finnick," he called, "Hold on a minute. I have something for your family." He went inside and returned with a large fish wrapped in a piece of old newspaper.

"Yeah, thanks, Mr. Goff, but what's this for?"

"Just a belated bit of welcome to the neighborhood. I thought it was better to wait until I could get my hands on something especially nice."

Showing back up with a professionally scaled fish with time enough to make it into dinner laid a good frame work for patching up things at the Odair home. His mother took the opportunity to say more kind things at once about their new neighbors than Finnick thought she had the whole time they'd lived there so far. Pa was Pa, but he respected Mr. Goff his professionalism, even if he were "only" a fish seller rather than a real sailor or fisherman.

"I went looking for you," his sister pouted, "I thought you might be at the Club."

"Sorry."

"But look what Ms. Song did to my hair," she turned around to show off the unusual braid Song had made out of her usual loose tresses. "Maybe I'll learn and do it all the time."

"It's pretty," he told her. He wouldn't have expected it from Song. In person, she always seemed to wear her hair in plain manner, usually pulled back without any ornamentation. He had thought the fancy hairstyles she wore for television appearances were all the work of stylists, but it seemed that was yet another thing about a new neighbor for him to reconsider.

"Ms. Song said she always wanted a sister. …Mom gave me permission to go down-district with her tomorrow to the Swap Market!"

"That's great, Corrie."

"Mags introduced me to Anamaria Ortiz," Taig spoke up.

"What?" Rafe, the oldest Odair child, and the tiredest feeling at this point in the week, looked up from his dinner for the first time in the meal, "You didn't tell me that."

"I wanted Finnick to be here, since she's his mentor and all," Taig shrugged. "Anyway, there may not be enough work coming in to bring me on full-time, but she says if I want to learn the craft, she'd be more than happy to have me."

"Oh, Taig!" Mom clapped. Everyone else, even Pa, smiled about it.

"If I order up a really fancy boat they'll definitely need you," Finnick grinned. He was glad that when it came to their new relationship to the victors his family seemed to be coming around. They were going to become part of the weave of this strange community one way or another.

At the Swap Market, Corrina traded away pretty beach finds from her collection and spent her allowance to bring home a bunch of old stationery and paper clippings to have some materials to start practicing decoupage with Song.

"Oh, aren't you crafty, dear," Mom examined Corrina's first piece of work.

"You should have a fun talent like this, Finnick," his sister declared.

"Mags and I are still talking about it. But I don't think I'm exactly the arts and crafts type."

"There've been some dancing ones, right?" his mother tried to recall, "And that boy in Seven plays the guitar. You like music, Finnick…"

"Like I said," he headed toward the door, "We're still deciding."

It was true that Theo had always wanted to act, Song had been set upon her decoupage no matter how many commentators were equally set upon making jokes about it (the decoupage heels from her Victory Tour were infamous), and Shad was perfectly matched to his flower arranging, but Odysseus had only gotten to ceramics through a mixture of guidance and trial and error. According to his mother, Jules had been so ambivalent about choosing a talent that he had first asked to just do the same as Odysseus (as Mags had expected, the Bureau of Victor Affairs struck this choice down as too soon to a repeat talent to be allowed).

Finnick went around to collect the talent suggestions he had asked the other victors to come up with for him.

"That, um, pretty dancing on your toes. What's it called? Ballet?" said Song. Finnick wondered if she were joking. "Theo says 'comedian.'"

"Isn't that pretty much him?"

"Do you like animals?" Shad offered. "Something with animals maybe. Ombry raises rabbits out in Nine."

Tyde was in his front yard scraping off his barbecue. "I bet you could learn to juggle or something. I wonder if that'd be enough to make a whole talent..."

"Err, I don't know."

"Do you surf?" asked Odysseus, "That's like my personal talent-hobby. I could help you get into it."

Mags hadn't settled on her suggestion and instead just invited him in. "I was already boiling water for tea," she smiled, "And there's certainly enough for two."

She turned down his offers of assistance for pouring and getting everything set up and was left sitting on her couch watching some bit of fluff reporting that seemed like rather premature hype over his eventual Victory Tour.

Mags settled the tea tray onto her coffee table with a careful clink. "I know you like the sugar cookies," she indicated the vaguely flower-shaped pale cookies on a plate in the center. "Mine are made from a recipe an old friend in Six gave me."

"You're so nice, Mags."

He waited to take a cookie until she had finished stirring a bit of honey into her tea.

"It'll be fun to go on the Tour together, huh? I mean, it looks fun. There's no one I'd rather go with than you." Finnick found the wait for her response to these words felt long in coming. He wondered what was on her mind. "…You'll get to see some of your friends on the Tour, right? …Like Pal and Shy and maybe Hector?"

"Yes," she said slowly, "Some of them we might. …Possibly not Hector. Or not more than a glimpse. There are so many these days in Two and One they don't need everyone out and about to make a good showing."

"I promise I'll be on my best behavior."

She met his eyes and from her look he thought it might have occurred to her that she was acting distant or out of character. The smile that followed was considerably more a part of her ordinary manner. "Yes," she spoke lightly, "That will certainly help."

"…Did you have fun on your Victory Tour?"

"Well…mostly, I think that I did. It was hard to go on grappling with the things I did in my Games, but I saw many things and met many people who would go on to become my friends."

That was right. As their first victor, she had been alone in her position when she came home to Four. She had been sole victor in Four for twelve years until Tyde won, an agonizingly long stretch of time to take multiple tributes past the top eight mark and still be left alone.

He was the newest addition to a family she had formed from grit and strategy and luck and for all the bonds of time and trust she shared with the others, still he felt she loved him specially. He had acted out of turn and against her wishes when he had volunteered. Now he would do his part to get along with the rest of her family and be a good "son" and make it all up to her. A mentor, especially Mags, was a kind of amazing person to have on his side, after all.


End file.
